This has been a funny old week for Mr Biffo's Found Footage. As you may be aware, we finally got a bit of media interest - in the form of an article on Polygon.

Suffice to say, it has had an immediate noticeable effect on the show, with new people watching, a surge in YouTube subscribers, and... unfortunately... a lot of people thinking a) The series was about to end (you've at least three more eps to come), and b) That Charlie Brooker had more to do with it than he did.

It was a bit embarrassing for me, as it did look like I'd gone on and on about him in the interview for the article, when he was merely a backer. Though I do appreciate that Polygon were trying to find an angle that would get people interested - and there's no question that it worked. Thankfully, I dropped Charlie a line, and he is fine about it. Plus, I'm hugely grateful to Polygon for taking a punt on the show, when nobody else has done so.

The effect a bit of coverage has had already makes it all the more frustrating that I've struggled to get anywhere else to cover us... but... hopefully word of mouth is now spreading. We're not going anywhere, so over time I'm hopeful that more and more people will discover it, and enjoy it as a complete piece with a beginning, middle and end.

If you do want to feature Found Footage on your site, podcast, or whatevs... please drop me a line at digitiser2000@gmail.com

The response to this ep has surprised me. I was worried that - because it puts more of an emphasis on plot over funnies - it might turn people off, but it seems to be a favourite for a lot of you. Which means you're finally seeing the pieces of the puzzle coming together.

Anyhow. Enough waffle. If you wish to discuss the episodes, I suggest you head over to Facebook, where the Brannigan's Vortex group share their theories as to the greater conspiracy. Or post a comment below. I like hearing what you thought.

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read on unless you have watched Manorak!

WOULD YOU LIKE A GOUJON?

Oh look - it's Goujon John! Or is it...?

EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE...

And here's Goujon John. Again. This guy is one of Fiverr's most notorious sellers, as he's known for saying pretty much anything, while dressed as Jesus, and some of the stuff he has been paid to say has been rather controversial. If I ever get to make another series, I hope I have enough budget not to have to rely on Fiverr so much.

THE GNOMELING

You all get the references here, right? It's inspired by The Hobbit - the classic, ground-breaking, adventure game - which I played a lot of, but never finished. This whole sequence is an ode to my frustration, and the weird grammar of the adventures from that era.

SUPERHUMAN RESOURCES

The filming of this sketch was a turning point for me. This sequence was originally heavily scripted, but when the guys - Chris Coltrane, Tom Webster and Yiannis Vassilakis - ran through it as scripted, it felt off somehow.

The making of Found Footage has been a learning curve for me, and among the things I've realised is that the weird stuff works best when played straight, and if it's too heavily scripted some of it feels forced. An exception is Manorak, as one example, which is obviously meant to be scripted. Albeit terribly.​So, with this I asked the cast to stop sticking to the script word-for-word, and improvise around it. We ended up with about 45 minutes of material, which I then edited down to the four minutes or so that you see in the episode.

The Blue Extruder's noises came about because in one take Tom, who was playing him, lifted his arms up and yawned. I found it so funny that I just kept asking him to do it, as if it was some sort of involuntary tick. You can actually hear us laughing in a couple of the shots...

This altered approach does mean that there might be some stuff that we filmed which will end up not featuring in the series. But... I will find a way to get all of it out there somehow.

KNIFE & WIFE

The first thing I had made for TV was an animated pilot for Channel 4, based upon the Knife & Wife cartoons I drew when I was a teenager - and then later did for my old Bubblegun website. I was crushingly disappointed with the end result, and there was nobody to blame but myself. It was a classic case of writing what I thought others might want, rather than writing to please myself.

You can see hints of the real me in that Knife & Wife pilot, but they're almost apologetic in the way they're featured. I was too green, too young, to have the confidence to assert myself on the project. Plus, being a low-budget animation, I was aware that it was hard to make changes quickly and easily.

Having total control over every aspect of Found Footage works with how my brain functions. I think it's quite hard for me to communicate to other people what I'm after a lot of the time, because it's so specific. And often I'll play around with half a dozen different versions of a thing before it feels right.

That Knife & Wife pilot has haunted me for years. The worst part was knowing that it wasn't very good, and having people tell me that it was, and knowing they were just being nice.

So... this clip is based upon a cartoon I drew when I was 17. I always intended to replace the voices - the ones you hear were only meant to be place-holders - but in the end I decided they were weird enough to fit the vibe of the series.

MANORAK

The exterior stuff for Manorak was our first proper day shooting on Found Footage, and we started big - with a speedboat. We were also meant to be doing some shooting with a sports car - all thanks to Dave Culley, who features as one of the "Scottish" terrorists, along with Steve Horsley - but ran out of time, as we'd slightly miscalculated the distance between locations. This taught us a lot about scheduling.

It was a bastard of a sequence to edit. I only let it go when I stopped trying to make it look slick, and fix the sound, and reminded myself that it was meant to be the vanity project of a lunatic.

Talking of lunatics, Manorak himself is played by my mate Jesse Ross. He's not an actor, but I realised on a night down the pub that he'd be perfect for Manorak. He was so good that I asked him to be in the series Finale as well. Oh, and that's his brand new baby son who features in the "I am Goujon John" sequence.

Also featuring in Manorak, as the boss of the terrorists, is another mate, Jon Downes, who runs the Centre for Fortean Zoology. And Manbag is played by Matt Casey, a friend of Jesse's. Again, not an actor, but brilliant nonetheless.

Also, I got to have goes in the speedboat, which was exciting - but also very uncomfortable. Manorak is a good example of my ambition extending beyond my available experience and skills. It's a miracle it turned out as well as it did.

AN ODE TO GOUJON JOHN

One of the great pleasures of working on this show has been working with Chris Jerden-Cooke. I can send him a bunch of lyrics, and a request to turn something into - say - a hymn, and two days later he'll have produced a piece of music as astonishing as this.

I'M COMPLETELY FINE

Oh look - it's Goujon John!

NUGGET NIELSEN

This was one of the first sequences I put together. I always knew there'd be some sort of nugget-based rival to Goujon John, but fairly early on people started guessing what my intentions were... which made me realise they might be too obvious. This led me to rethink the story, and find ways of taking a less-obvious route with much of the series, to keep people guessing.

THE CHURCH OF GOUJON JOHN

Weirdly, when I watched this back for the first time it made me feel a bit emotional. I don't even know why.

Possibly it was a combination of the uplifting music coming after so bleak an episode, the fact that the voiceover is effectively my take on our real world, Goujon John having been erased from existence - in the first edit of the episode he didn't appear in the hymn sequence, and this was the first time you saw him - and the fact that I am so grateful to the amazing performance of the actor in question.

One of my goals for the show is to try and make you feel something. Comedy - sketch comedy anyway - rarely does that, and you certainly don't tend to see it in stuff as left-field as Found Footage. It's easy when it's a scripted narrative show to manipulate the emotions of the audience, but I see it as a challenge to see if it's possible with something like this.

I really love the Blue Extruder and his weird tick, it's Manorak's attack on the terrorists that kills me though.

Reply

GosunJohn

2/10/2017 11:03:23 am

Loved, loved, flippin' well loved The Blue Extruder. I'd go as far as to say quality-wse, timing and for being absurdly funny and awkward, those scenes were on par with many of the cult alternative comedy shows, Big Train etc. I loved Manorak too but for different reasons, obviously. Sometimes being deliberately "cable tv" and cheap can feel too forced and suck the humour out of a sketch, but thanks to the cast, everyone of them so deliciously weird, it came across really well.

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Glyn

2/10/2017 11:06:33 am

I GENUINELY enjoyed the Knife and Wife pilot, it wasn't the same as the comic or the original script but it was Paul Rose on TV with Terry Jones voicing Knife. And that was awesome. As Ringo Starr once said of the White Album, "yeah there were problems with it, but it was the bloody Beatles White Album!". When a clip of that filtered through on FF I had to pause to celebrate!

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Chris

2/10/2017 11:41:01 am

Mr B should have tried to get Terry in to voice Knife in this. It felt wrong with the new voices!

Some genius lines in this episode, it keeps geting better...

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Mr Biffo

2/10/2017 12:04:10 pm

Sadly, if this wasn't impossible enough, Terry is very ill and can't speak any more. Putting a tiny bit of his dialogue into the ep already broke my heart as it was. Such a lovely man.

Glyn

2/10/2017 12:14:18 pm

I grew up watching him on Python, we have many of his childrens' books, so very sad what's happened. I'm grateful for all he's given us.

Chris

2/10/2017 12:16:46 pm

Aww, I knew he was ill but didn't realise he couldn't speak. Such a shame :(

Treacle

2/10/2017 11:24:42 am

Weirdly the bit that had me laughing longest and hardest was the moment an increasingly exasperated Sting exclaimed "Christ on a bike" while playing The Gnomeling, there was just something about the delivery that cracked me up.

When you first saw the Australian (?) actors performance (Manorak boss / topless otter aficionado), what was your initial reaction to his unique style of delivery?

Also did he take much persuading to whip his top off, or does he always perform bare-chested?

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combat_honey

2/10/2017 02:26:48 pm

I'm finding that the series has been divided quite clearly into stuff that is immediately hilarious to me and stuff that I don't really 'get', but then grows on me subsequently. Broadly speaking, I loved most of 'Advanced Strangulation' and 'Manorak' immediately, but much of the other two episodes didn't do too much for me at first, until I went back and re-watched them a few times.

I think prior to the series-proper starting I forgot that even with the pilot (which I consider perfect and will forever be my favourite Found Footage, simply because it came first) there was a lot of it I didn't really get at first, but which I later grew to love. It's difficult to explain, but even bits that I didn't initially find particularly funny or interesting now totally draw me in because of the atmosphere or the visuals or the delivery of a certain line. Without being too wanky about it, with those bits it's kind of like getting into a really good avant garde prog rock album that initially leaves you bewildered.

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Sam

2/10/2017 03:15:26 pm

Yes, I can relate to this.

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Mr Bifo

2/10/2017 09:21:01 pm

Ohhh... I love you, combat_honey. You're the first one to get it!! I've been describing Found Footage to my other half as "prog comedy", and been threatening to write a piece about it... but feared it might come across as wanky. So, I've avoided doing it... but you nailed it: that is totally, totally what I'm aiming for.

If, say, Little Britain or The Fast Show are "pop comedy", FF is totally prog. It's not immediately accessible, but - if I get it right, and you put in the effort - will stay with you longer.

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combat_honey

2/10/2017 10:53:41 pm

Hey, I'm glad that my take on the show chimes so closely with your intent!

I was actually thinking if other things outside of music that have made me feel the same way that FF does and the only other thing I can think of, weirdly, is The Wire. Obviously it's totally the opposite of FF in almost every other way, but it has the same slow-burn element in that, while it might seem bewildering and confounding at first, it opens up to you once you adjust to its particular rhythm and cadence.

This is exactly how the show works and it is kinda great. Some of the sketches might seem like they were missing the mark in your case but then something reminds you of them and you can't stop reminding yourself and eventually re-watching it.

Biggest example in my case is "Roaming Thomas". It was funny when I've seen the pilot but then it started to grow bigger and bigger and now Roaming Thomas is one of my most favorite things ever. By the time he appeared in "Whimsy Rogers" I was filling every room I was in with discordant clanks and frenetic behaviour.

Sorry for being a bit late. As I usually do, I've decided to postpone the episode till monday because I needed to force my friends to see it.

To say that episode was immensely enjoyable would be an understatement. I can relate with Sting, I totally dig "Manorak" which is basically every weird 80's show thrown together on no budget (still, a very ambitious sketch and the stunts are quite amazing) and, of course, Goujon John and Xenoxxx subplots are great. And "Knife and Wife"... And... Everything was great.

Loved the appearance by Mentski (I hope that his "starring" credit is a guarantee that he will return) and wondered a lot where have I seen Jesse Ross before?.. Was he some of the ghosts in the Celebrity Ghostel?..

I always watch these blind drunk then read these articles to remind me what I watched.I always wake up after watching it feeling like something very bad has happened!! Usually re watching it sober a few days later.
But, I digress, what I love about the show is that I finally feel that it's made by someone that has similar phobias as me. Weird ads and tv idents, you know, like, imagine if a voice over or a jingle or a tv ident went on just a bit too long or was a bit off or a bit too loud.

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Matthew Long

3/10/2017 06:00:10 pm

Manorak is so, so funny. It was funny in the early sneak-peaks, but even more so when you realise the context of the crapness - it's an egotist's vanity project, a la Garth Marenghi. My favourite moment is the delivery of 'fair enough... fair enough," and the look on his face before he says it.

The music continues to be a real highlight. And while the show is still hilarious, I found this episode to be rather moving in an odd way, too. Combat_honey's take on the show sums it up extremely well.

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Biscuits

4/10/2017 11:48:04 am

Am I too late to register my amazement with this episode? FF keeps getting better and better

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Da5e

4/10/2017 06:44:20 pm

The music during Nugget Neilson is used in Whatculture Wrestling's videos, and now I have an urge to like, share and subscribe while swearing at you for not being called Plumpy.